Fall Interludes
by Edhla
Summary: A collection of extended and extra scenes from my fic "After the Fall."
1. Dark Night- 1:1

_**A/N- **__This is a "Director's Cut", of sorts, to my fic After the Fall (which you can find on my profile. The mind boggles as to why I'm not allowed to link to it here...) _

_Since these are missing scenes and moments of that fic, they might not make much sense to you if you're not familiar with it, but you can probably still enjoy them anyway. The numbers in the chapter titles indicate where they fall as per After the Fall; for example, 3:2 is the second chapter in Fall Interludes that takes place during or after Chapter 3 of After the Fall. _

* * *

John watched Molly get into the cab on the kerb, then shut the flat door and drew the security chain across again. He glanced at the clock. Just before nine. Far too early to be crawling into bed.

Besides, the people upstairs were watching a DVD and had the TV turned up so loud that John could tell which one. _Batman Begins. _He'd rented that once when he- when they'd lived at Baker Street. Just before it had happened. Of course, Sherlock had rolled his eyes and flicked his dressing gown petulantly and made some bitchy remark about his flatmate's low-brow taste in cinema. At first he'd flounced off to his bedroom. But after he'd come out again to find some book he owned on Ancient Mesopotamian burial practices, he'd ended up sitting down to watch, enthralled through the whole thing and never venturing so much as a word. John remembered him sitting bundled up in his armchair, hands clasped around his knees, grey eyes glinting with keen interest. He'd admitted afterwards that perhaps it might be beneficial for him to become more informed about popular culture.

"You know, if you'd watched this _before_ we went out to Devon, you'd probably have solved the Baskerville case a lot quicker," John had made a point of teasing him.

"Well, you saw it months ago, and it didn't help _you_ any," had been the cross response.

"No," John conceded. "But then, I'm not the world's only consulting detective, am I?"

Another conversation that had been funny at the time. Another memory which sometimes kept John up at night. _ I was so hard on him all the time. Every day. If I'd just let him know how much I thought of him... _

Sherlock was dead seven weeks later.

This was new progress for John- just that week, he'd been able to say it clearly, both in his head and in his heart: _Sherlock is dead. _

Ella had told him just the day before. _You can't change the past. You can only change how you respond to the past._

The usual rubbish that Ella came up with in therapy. Honestly, if it wasn't for Greg making a point of saying, "How's Ella?"every time they saw one another, he'd have been sorely tempted to give up on that. It wasn't making him feel any better. Mostly, it was just making him feel worse. Since the previous afternoon, it was a refrain he couldn't get out of his head: _Sherlock is dead. Sherlock is dead. Sherlock is dead._

He pulled out his laptop and fired it up, sitting on the bed with it balancing on his knees. As good a heater as any, really, and the warmth soothed the stiff, aching muscles in his right leg.

He had no internet access, of course- it would be just another bill he didn't need and couldn't pay. He was determined not to hack into upstairs' account, even though Sherlock had once shown him how simple it was to do. Anyway, the last thing he wanted was to go through about a month's worth of backlogged emails, or have an awkward chat with Harry. And then, the last time he'd been online at Greg's place, his fingers had twitched to type in the old familiar address of Sherlock's website...

He couldn't go back there. Not now. Maybe not ever.

John played solitaire for half an hour. Decent game for boredom, something to concentrate on beyond the upstairs DVD and the ache in his leg. His concentration broke only when his phone bleeped out a text alert. He fished it out of his jacket pocket and looked at the displayed number.

Molly.

_Hi John, I just found a blanket I don't really have room to store. Would you like me to bring it over?_

Sighing, he thumbed in the response. _Not tonight Molly. It's late and cold._

_Okay, sorry if I woke you up. _

_You didn't, it's fine. Goodnight._


	2. Transactions 1:2

During his eighteen-months at Baker Street, John had stopped obsessively collecting receipts for every transaction he ever made, whether it was buying or selling or simply getting a balance out of an ATM. While he'd never been exactly wealthy (and, he'd reflected a few times, it was entirely likely that he never would be), he had been comfortable for most of that time; he'd become used to the idea that there was a bit of money in the bank in case of emergencies. He had dropped the need to know his account balance down to the penny at all times, just in case he was ever caught out and in desperate need of basics like bread and toilet paper.

That was just one thing that changed when... when the world changed.

It was an awkward bank balance; twenty-three pounds, fourteen p. It had to last until next Thursday, and while there was no chance in the world of it paying the rent he owed, John supposed it would fend off starvation until then if he was careful with it. Might even pay for a bus fare out to the cemetery. Once, maybe twice.

Pulling the receipt out of the ATM, he glanced over the balance. And what should have been three quid and odd was now... one thousand and three quid and odd.

Puzzled, he turned the receipt over, as if expecting the answers to be written somewhere on the back. But the blank paper revealed nothing, and he turned it back over again. He wasn't imagining those extra numerals.

Good job he'd used the Bank ATM and not the one at the railway station.

He stepped into the bank foyer, inundated immediately with the cloying smell of new carpet and the hot blast of heaters turned up far too high. A fair queue, too- not that he had anywhere else to be, really- and it was twenty minutes before it was his turn to approach the teller behind the bullet-proof glass. A woman about his own age, pretty in her own way. Hideous magenta lipstick and tacky plastic earrings.

"Can I help you?" was her bright salutation.

"Hi, um," he muttered, deeply embarrassed. "I think there's been a mistake on my account. There seems to be far too much money in here." He passed the ATM receipt under the bullet-proof glass and she took it between her manicured nails, as if he was somehow tainted. "I, uh, I can show you my card," he faltered, fumbling in his battered wallet for it. "I don't have a statement on me at the moment, sorry."

"Wait here, please."

She took his card and the receipt and went through a glass-panelled door to somewhere in the mysterious back rooms of the branch. Behind John, the queue was growing, and he flinched as someone rather obviously coughed in annoyance at his holding up the line on a busy morning. But Plastic Earrings was back two minutes later, with the receipt and card and another, larger piece of paper.

"All in order," she said breezily. "The money's definitely there. Third-party transaction came in from an account last night. You weren't expecting anyone to transfer funds?"

He looked blankly at her, wondering if Harry...

No, not Harry. She didn't know his bank account details. And she didn't know them for _a damn good reason. This_ reason, as a matter of fact. She'd been threatening to "lend" him money for weeks.

"No," he said confusedly. "Are you- are you sure?"

"Yes... see, here's your most recent transaction history." She showed him the paperwork. "9:37pm. NatWest account 77382842. M. Holmes. You don't know who that is?"

During his residency in Chelmsford in earlier years, John had seen a lot of people, and didn't always like the "human nature" that he saw. Saturday nights were sometimes ventures in how quickly one could dodge a punch or wrestle a drunk, bottle-wielding guy to the floor without anyone getting hurt.

Those things were typical. They passed. But the one he always remembered was the woman who had spat on him.

Her daughter had died. Seventeen years old. Car accident. The girl had been dead on arrival at the hospital, and had stayed dead, even though most of the A&E had worked on her for nearly half an hour. John, as the youngest resident, had been given the task of telling the parents. The mother's grief had turned her feral. And so she had spat on him.

At _M. Holmes, _John suddenly felt sick. Mycroft had done his brother to death. Betrayed him to Moriarty for some idiotic code. He may as well have pushed his little brother off that rooftop. Mycroft had taken away his best friend, the best man he'd ever known- and was now trying to repair the damage by buying him.

He would have felt better if Mycroft had skipped the elaborate tactics and just spat in his face instead.

Plastic Earrings was looking at him expectantly.

"Uh..." he looked down at the receipt again. "Could I- could I withdraw that, please?"


	3. One Thousand and One Anecdotes 2:1

In the weeks of September and October, Molly Hooper learned two things about John Watson. The first was that he rarely left his flat for 'just no reason', and his reasons for leaving were few and far between. The second was that if she mentioned cutting across Weaver's Fields for the railway station after dark, he would put a jacket on and come with her.

At first, he didn't have a great deal to say during those dark walks across the frosty grass. It was a companionable silence, but it was silence. But then, he didn't have a great deal to say at the flat, either. He was different in action, she noticed; more dynamic and capable, even though his broken hand was still bandaged up for those weeks. It was half a dozen walks in near-silence before he lost that restless wariness that had him occasionally turn around to look behind him, without even slowing down.

And it was halfway through October when she finally mentioned the love of her life to him.

She'd had a good visit that time. John had been more lively than she'd seen him since Sherlock's death, and had smiled - actually smiled - at something she'd said about a co-worker as they sat drinking tea at the flat, she in the chair, he cross-legged on the floor. He hadn't even retreated when she suggested he might like to come over and watch a DVD one day, though he hadn't exactly _agreed_ to it, either. She'd stayed forty minutes later than usual, and they were halfway to the railway station when she said it.

"I suppose Toby will be upset about having a late dinner."

He raised an eyebrow, taking a two-second break from scanning the horizon to glance across at her. "Toby?"

"Oh... my- he's my cat." Her hand went instinctively to her face. "I- I might have blogged about him once or twice..."

"Oh, yes, I remember," was the polite but not-terribly-interested response. "Good company?"

"Yes. It's nice to have someone waiting for you when you get home." She paused. "Maybe a cat might be good company for you, too...?"

He shook his head. "Part of the lease," he explained. "And anyway, I'm not really much of a cat person. Prefer dogs." He shrugged. "I dunno why. I think they're more loyal. But to each their own."

Molly didn't know why, but she took that as a cue that Toby was now a good, neutral topic of conversation during those walks across the fields. Toby, who she'd adopted from an animal shelter because he was a week away from Death Row. Toby, who slept on her bed, ate whatever wasn't nailed down, and who once snuck out of her flat and caught a bird, but had let it fly away again because he didn't have a clue what to do with it. Toby, who...

It was one night, after half-a-dozen of these one-sided conversations, when she finally _realised_. The mortifying reality stopped her dead in her tracks and brought her hands up to her face again. "Oh, God," she blurted out. "I'm sorry."

He'd stopped with her, drawing his un-bandaged hand out of his jacket pocket. "Sorry?" he echoed. "What for?"

"Oh, I- I forgot you weren't a cat person," she lamented. "I must have been boring you to tears, John. I'm so sorry. Why didn't you stop me, tell me to just shut up?"

He shrugged. "I was actually enjoying that one," he explained. "You can't stop now and not tell me how on earth you got him out from behind the kitchen wall." He paused. Then, in different tones, "Hang on. Do people actually tell you to _shut_ _up_ when you talk about your cat?"

She looked around, too embarrassed to meet his gaze. "Not... not anymore," she murmured.

Neither of them spoke again until, twenty minutes later, he wished her goodnight on the train platform.


	4. The Darkest Place of All 2:2

The day was over.

Long shadows sprawled across the prim lawn, and a chill had set in, but it had been an insultingly beautiful day for early October. Floods of yellow sunshine and light, meandering little breezes that played among the chestnut trees and sent ripples through the grassy clumps over the graves.

There was no grass on Sherlock's grave; three and a half months and the great man's monument was a stark, glossy tombstone and a mound of dirt. John, drawing his jacket around himself with one hand, ran two fingers over the chilled words: _Sherlock Holmes. _No dates. No declaration that he was loved or missed. No clever quotes or generic pictures of flowers or birds. Nothing but a name.

John had brought nothing to soften that outline of dirt under that name, though he'd placed an bright florist's bouquet behind it. Not for Sherlock. John knew that the man's contempt for flowers would have been able to strip paint. These were for graves John could not visit: Joshua Harris. Soo Lin Yao. Mum.

He had nothing to say to Sherlock today.

A movement out of the corner of his eye made him startle; but it was only Greg Lestrade, carefully avoiding stepping on any graves as he passed the crematorium wall and made his way over. Jacket and tie. Probably just got off work. John turned back sulkily to the grave.

"Hey." Lestrade paused a few feet away and purposefully fixed his gaze back toward the little pagoda near the Roman Catholic divison of the cemetery.

"What are you doing here?" John wanted to know tersely.

"Look, I won't lie," he said. "Someone called in and let me know you were here."

John raised his eyebrows. "I wasn't aware that visiting a cemetery had become a criminal offense."

"It hasn't, so don't be like that, okay? They said you'd been here for four hours- and that was nearly an hour ago. And the gates shut in..." he checked his watch. "Eight minutes. Come on. We'll go for a pint."

He moved back toward the gates again; John followed, with an anxious look over his shoulder at the solitary grave left behind.

_I'm going for a pint somewhere warm, and Sherlock's lying in the dark under six feet of freezing dirt._

"So who was it?" he wanted to know bitterly as they went through the gates and started walking up the street to where Lestrade's car was parked. "Mycroft or Molly?"

"Neither, unless they've taken up chain-smoking and a Tyneside accent recently." Lestrade shoved his hands in his pockets. "Dunno who it was." They'd reached the car by this time; Lestrade fished his keys out and John gratefully climbed in the passenger side door. They'd reached the junction of Terry Street and Gray Road before Lestrade spoke again.

"Hey, John," he muttered. "You do realise it wasn't your fault... right? What happened."

"He was right in front of me that night." John clenched his hands. "Moriarty, I mean. He was _six bloody feet away from me._ If I'd just killed him then..."

"You didn't know what'd happen. None of us knew." Lestrade spoke a little vaguely; he was concentrating on merging into oncoming traffic. John wondered whether he meant a word of what he was saying, or whether it had become a comforting litany over the last few months: _not your fault. You didn't know. We didn't know. Not our fault._ "And look, maybe..." he faltered for a second. "Maybe it wouldn't have changed things very much for Sherlock, anyway. Maybe it was lots of things. Maybe... maybe he was just in a very dark place and didn't know any other way to get out."

_He's in the darkest place of all now._

"He wasn't a fraud, Greg."

"I know."

John looked out the window absently for a few seconds. The unasked question hung between them: if Sherlock wasn't a fraud, why did he commit suicide?

John had known the answer since the day it had happened.

_Because I left him there in the lab at Barts- left him for a lie. Sherlock thought I was his only friend. He was wrong, but he believed it. And when I turned on him..._

There were times when John felt the burden of Sherlock's suicide like a millstone around his neck.


End file.
